On Sunday morning, the Music department presented Kaffeekonzert, featuring Robert Hill performing J. S. Bach's Goldberg Variations, BWV 988. Hill is a professional harpsichordist and pianist and also a professor of early keyboard instruments in Freiburg, Germany. His expert performance of this epic work combined with the enchanting presentation to make for a thoroughly enjoyable and engaging musical experience for all attendees.

For the hour before the concert began, guests, students and faculty enjoyed coffee together in the Slosberg Recital Hall's lobby, setting the dignified tone of the morning. The stage looked more like a set for a play than a typical concert space: In the middle of the stage stood a pale green, delicate-looking harpsichord, in itself a rare sight for Slosberg, accompanied by a simple but elegant floor lamp. Hill walked on stage unassumingly and sat down to play almost immediately as if he were in a world, or even a time, separate from that of the audience. As soon as he began to play, the lights dimmed so that the lamp alone cast a soft glow on the stage. This setting, combined with the harpsichord's clear but distant sound, relative to that of a piano, felt simultaneously intimate and remote. As everything but this idyllic scene began to fade away, the audience was transported into the world in which Hill was playing.

The story goes that Bach composed these variations in 1741 when he was a court composer for Count Kaiserling of the electoral court of Saxony. Goldberg was Bach's student and used to accompany the count on his trips to Leipzig. The count suffered many sleepless nights, so Goldberg sat in the antechamber and played for the count late into the night. Count Keiserling once mentioned that he'd like some pieces of a smooth and lively nature to cheer him up on sleepless nights, and so Bach came up with the Goldberg variations. The count never tired of them, and when he couldn't sleep, he'd ask Goldberg to play him one of "his variations." The count awarded Bach 100 gold coins because he was so pleased with them. Certainly, with his entrancing staging and performance, Hill was paying homage to the variations' origins, and in many ways, the work impressed today's audience as much as we can imagine it did Count Keiserling.

Hill began with his own original introduction based on the harmonic structure of the variations and then went straight into the aria, a sweet, melodious and evocative theme. Thirty variations follow this aria, constituting an epic keyboard work that demands virtuosity and a great deal of musical insight to perform. Beyond the technical challenges that the work presents, this is a prime example of Bach at his most musically complex. Each variation is intricate on a structural and technical level, full of ornamentation and other techniques that highlight the interaction between the individual notes and voices. The articulation of the notes on the harpsichord accented this element of Bach's writing here, but the continuous progression and development of the thematic material gave the variations a momentum that had a mesmerizing effect. In many ways, this work set the standard for writing variations, as Bach explores every possible inversion and construct based on the aria, and arranged all of the variations in a way that has a logical progression throughout.

The 15th variation is the first one in a minor key, and in a way, it puts the breaks on the flow and progression that builds until that point. It signals the halfway point and sets the stage for the 16th, the "Variation 16. à 1 Clav. Ouverture," which is, perhaps, the most showy and grand of all the variations. From this point on, each variation glimmers more brilliantly than the one before it, delicate but complex, until the aria reappears at the very end. This return is not a regression, but rather a realization of all of the dimensions and layers of writing that underlie the simple theme. An hour and 15 minutes worth of complexity and exploration culminate in this beautiful melody that brings us back into the world from which we had departed.

Hill took liberties with tempo and maintained a stillness and relaxed demeanor throughout the concert so that it seemed like even he took a back seat to the music itself; he presented it to the audience, but really, we were all there to watch the narrative of the variations develop and reach its end. As it turned out, the whole aesthetic of the performance had great significance to the history and legacy of the work.

With this musical tour de force, Hill carried on the legacy of this preeminent piece of one of the greatest musical masters of all time.